I developed transversal poetics, and continue to do so with a number of
collaborators, because of the need for theories, methodologies, and aesthetics
that are rigorous, conscientious, and adaptable.[1]
Rebecca Nesvet's review of Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance and
Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England grossly misrepresents transversal
poetics and the book's arguments.[2]
I will discuss this problem shortly. But first I want to comment on Nesvet's
disparaging tone -- evident by her presumptuous references to my "intentions"
and "excuses" -- that culminates in her comparison of me with the
notorious physicist Alan Sokal.

Sokal submitted an article on the sociopolitical value of "important
developments in physical science" to Social Text in bad faith,
with the deliberate intention of exposing its meaninglessness should the editors
prove gullible enough to publish it, which they did.[3]
Regarding me, Nesvet writes:

After reading Becoming Criminal, my first thought was
that Reynolds is a brilliant writer, trying to perpetrate a Sokal-style
hoax. I really hope this was indeed his intention, because if we seriously
validate, practice, and promote his method of making history, we will find
ourselves in a world in which reasoning, truth, and responsible historiography
are alien.

Keeping this comparison in mind, I will now look into Nesvet's misunderstanding
of my book because it may provide clues to how she came to this criticism.

To begin with, Nesvet neglects to engage with the many arguments I make
throughout Becoming Criminal, including those concerning language difference,
social space, transvestism, and antitheatricality; and curiously, of the book's
five chapters, she does not touch on the arguments of three at all. So, what
did Nesvet set out to review?

Nesvet's main criticism is of my suggestion that history is mediated. She
finds this idea dangerous because, as she implies in the passage quoted above,
she interprets historical fact as absolute reality. I do not deny that events
occur, but rather emphasize that the more time, space, and diverse representations
of events separate us from them, the more difficult it is to discern absolutely
what actually occurred. I think that such a claim is obvious and not at all
threatening; more importantly, with regard to the enterprise of Becoming
Criminal, it is a purposeful premise from which to begin investigating
the diverse representations of criminal culture in early modern England. It
allows me, for instance, to discuss both real and imaginary qualities of criminal
culture and the difficulty in distinguishing between them in order to give
a sophisticated examination of representations of criminal culture in the
period without subscribing wholly to either the view that the rogue literature
accurately represents the culture or that the literature is primarily fictitious.
My emphasis on the roles of mediation and fetishization shows how important
representations of criminal culture were and are because they were so abundant
and precisely because we cannot tell for certain what is or is not true.

Nesvet claims, "A preface detailing the teenage Reynolds' personal
interaction with Italian-American drug dealers and a lengthy digression on
the mafia film genre are intended to substantiate [what she thinks is my]
approach." The fact is that my discussion is not limited to my personal
interaction with Italian-American drug dealers or mafia films, but rather
investigates a variety of representations of the Italian-American mafia. Moreover,
I explicitly state my intentions, which are strikingly different from those
Nesvet attributes to me:

I have been discussing the Italian-American mafia to illustrate
a similarity between the present investigation of early modern England's
criminal culture and that of our hypothesized twenty-fourth century scholar
that will become apparent as my analysis progresses. Basically, this similarity
relates to the fact that some popular "truths" have a profound
impact on people without also having much credibility in terms of an academically
approved history or a readily substantiated historical reality. If a society
believes in a "truth," such as the Christian concept of God, and
its members live in accordance with that "truth," then in many
respects one could say that that "truth" might as well be fact.
A commonly believed "truth" is often this society's "reality,"
since, as an everyday operative "truth," it informs the lived
experience of the society's members. The "truth" becomes another
buttress in the society's ideological infrastructure. When the "truth"
in question relates to mysterious subject matter, such as the supernatural
force of a god, the metaphysics of being, romantic love, or a (less abstract)
secret society like the Italian-American mafia or early modern England's
criminal culture, the possibility of its material substantiation is diminished
and its potential for conceptual influence is increased. In other words,
the more amorphous and intangible the subject matter, the easier it is for
people in power, which is to say the "authorities," to exploit
their subordinates based on what they do not and cannot know about it. (7)

My study is more about representation and how we as scholars and critics
engage with it than about attempting to prove whether the culture represented
really existed as such. Given this focus, combined with the lack of hard evidence,
I remain non-committal about the facts, to which we can never have unmediated
access. As I write in Becoming Criminal:

I am most concerned with the connections between the conceptual
influence, social power, and literary-cultural implications of the criminal
culture's presence in the popular imagination. The "history" I
pursue is that of the relationships between criminal culture's representation,
the processes of identity formation and subjectification with which the
populace had to cope, and the general circulation of sociopolitical power
that made this period in English history so exceptionally innovative and
transformational. (8)

Nesvet laments my perspective, but goes on to wrongly claim that I assert
"facts" that do not "hold water." She then says, "the
fact that a number of writers agree that something exists does not mean that
it does, or ever did." This is a crucial point that I make throughout
the book, particularly with the mafia example in the introduction, even though
I acknowledge "consistency of representation" as a strong form of
evidence (8).

While critiquing me for basing my "discoveries" on "under-evidenced
generalisation and outright misinformation" (Nesvet), Nesvet never provides
evidence to refute any of my working conclusions about the existence of a
criminal culture in early modern England. After all, as I have stated and
emphasize in the passage quoted from Becoming Criminal in the following
paragraph, our only access to the history in question is through our readings
of artifacts, which are primarily textual and questionable because of the
genres of literature through which much of the available information comes
to us.

As evidence from Becoming Criminal that refutes most of the criticisms
Nesvet posits about my methodology and arguments, consider the following passage
from page 124, a passage from which Nesvet decontextualizes and quotes some
text, using ellipses:

To be sure, the malleability of "truths" exploited
by the criminals, and possibly by those who wrote about them, illuminates
the fact that all historiography is necessarily both actual and imaginary.
The literary representation of criminal culture is itself a differential
space where the actual and the imaginary simultaneously collide and coalesce.
In reading this representation, we must take into consideration, if not
allow ourselves to be liberated by, the conceptual space made possible by
historiography's actual and imaginary elements, especially because it is
often difficult, if not impossible, to discern between the two. On the one
hand, the abundance of state documents that support the largely uniform
depiction of criminal culture presented by the various forms of its literary
representation work to carve out actual space within criminal culture's
historiography. On the other hand, all of our means of exploring criminal
culture are highly mediated, through time, language, and personal bias (ours
and that of the chroniclers). Much of the mediation is also through literary
texts of genres (plays, ballads, and popular pamphlets) that are, because
of their fictive qualities, of questionable historical reliability. This
mediation encourages the production of imaginary components of our own study
of criminal culture. Just as its early modern chroniclers were forced, and
probably capitalized on the opportunity, to extrapolate at times because
of their limited access to this exclusive and clandestine culture, historical
difference, that is both sociocultural and spatiotemporal, forces us to
extrapolate on the available information. Therefore, this analytical tour
of early modern England's criminal culture must be, among other things,
a transversal venture into differential conceptual spaces.

It is clear from this passage that I do not argue that "all early modern
criminologists agree that a unified criminal culture exists" (Nesvet)
and that I challenge this assumption, even though Nesvet claims that "there
is no record" in Becoming Criminal of me doing so. Moreover, contrary
to her assertion, I am practicing "responsible historiography" (Nesvet)
by acknowledging the contingencies and opportunities involved in interpretation.

Nesvet attempts to discredit my reading of the famous Elizabethan Act of
1566 against "Cutpurses or Pyckpurses" by suggesting that the statute
may in fact refer to "crypto-Catholics" instead of cutpurses. This
is a distinct possibility, but I chose to focus on what appears to be the
clearly stated purposes of the statute. I was encouraged do so through reading
the work of many historians, from Frank Aydelotte to Ian Archer,[4]
who also concluded that the statute refers to cutpurses.
Also, many other documents and almost every writer of rogue literature in
the period use one of the words in the phrase noted by Nesvet, "Brotherhed
or Fraternitie of an Arte or Mysterie," to refer to gangs of cutpurses,
sometimes in the subtitles or titles of their tracts, such as John Awdeley's
The Fraternitye of Vacabondes (1561).[5]Here
is the edict in question:

Where a certayne kynde of evill disposed persons commonly called
Cutpurses or Pyckpurses, but in deede by the Lawes of this Lande very Fellons
and Theeves, doo confeder togethers making among thenselves as it were a
Brotherhed or Fraternitie of an Arte or Mysterie, to lyve idellye by the
secrete Spoyle of the good and true Subjects of this Realme, and aswell
at Sermons and Preachings of the Woorde of God, and in places and tyme of
doing service and common Prayer in Churches Chappelles Closettes and Oratories,
and not only there but also in the Princes Palace House, yea and presence,
and at the Places and Courts of Justice, and at the tymes of Mynystracion
of the Lawes in the same, and in Fayres Markettes and other Assemblies of
People, yea and at the tyme of doing of Execucion of such as ben attaynted
of anye Murder Felonye or other crimynall Cause ordeined chieflye for Terrour
and Example of evill doers, do without respect or regarde of anye tyme place
or person, or anye feare or dreade of God, or any Lawe or Punyshment, under
the cloke of Honestie, by their owtwarde Apparell Countenance and Behaviour
subtiltie privilye craftelye and felonyously take the Goodes of dyvers good
and honest Subjects from their persons by cutting and pycking their Purses
and other felonious Slaightes and Devices, to the utter undoing and impoverishment
of many: Bee it therefore enacted by the aucthorite of this present Parliament,
&c., &c., to the effect that persons convicted of this crime shall
be executed as felons without benefit of clergy. (107)

How we read this 450 year-old statute is subject to many variables, both historical
and contemporary. The same could be said of Nesvet's review, especially if
readers now or in the future do not have immediate access to the book itself.
Nesvet's review seems -- because it is riddled with "under-evidenced
generalisation and outright misinformation" (Nesvet) -- to be of a different
book, although it is presented as a representation of Becoming Criminal.
Fortunately, in the interest of countering "the dangerously institutionalised
devaluation of the pursuit of objective historical facts in the study of English
and cultural studies" (Nesvet), if anyone desires direct access to the
work that she has misrepresented, Becoming Criminal is available at
university libraries, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and countless other
venues.

Most scholarship is about the subject matter under investigation and its
implications for future research and teaching in related fields. Its publication
is dependent on the positive recognition of other scholars who are experts
in related fields and have been trained within the academic system and are
therefore aware of the codes for academic freedom, honesty, responsibility,
and professionalism. All research and teaching methods are ideologically informed
and, I believe, their practitioners should be held accountable insofar as
the results influence society. It is the responsibility of researchers, teachers,
and book reviewers to maintain certain standards, especially with regard to
academic integrity. Whether well intended or in bad faith, scholarship that
makes truth-claims is always subject to revision insofar as today's truths
are often tomorrow's fallacies. As our powers of observation increase, as
they did with inventions like the telescope, microscope, and satellite cameras,
and as new information is revealed through discoveries of lost texts, fossils,
and other artifacts, we are reminded again and again of the Protean nature
of "facts." More importantly, we are given the opportunity to embrace
ideas positively in the interest of learning, evolution, creativity, and pleasure.
Such purpose is primary to Becoming Criminal and to transversal poetics
in general.

Notes

[1] On transversal poetics, see the
following works by Bryan Reynolds: "The Devil's House, 'or worse': Transversal
Power and Antitheatrical Discourse in Early Modern England" (Theatre
Journal 49.2 [1997]: 143-67); Becoming Criminal: Transversal Performance
and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 2002), 1-22; and Performing Transversally: Reimagining
Shakespeare and the Critical Future (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003),
1-28.